


Lean down and feel sombre

by Sombre (MisterMental)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-20
Updated: 2011-05-20
Packaged: 2017-10-19 15:31:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/202395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MisterMental/pseuds/Sombre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Where Problem Sleuth is taking bloody baths and Spades Slick watches him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lean down and feel sombre

**Author's Note:**

> It came out pretty plotless, but I hope I got a mental picture in your head. I just wanted to write something genuinely bloody and violent for no particular reason.

As soon as you enter your poorly furnished apartment, you hurl the bloodied folder you’ve been holding, taut with papers, documents and folders, on the floor. It flings throw the air, and even after its crashing on the floor it slips further on the smooth surface until it ducks into the farer wall of the corridor. You head to the bathroom. You only bother to take off your trench coat, painted with blood, dirt and smoky rain. You climb into the bathtub and turn the water on. You set it on hot, but not very, and lean down, slide all the way, until you're at the very bottom of the bath, your knees sticking out.

That was a pretty tiresome night.

You allow your eyes to close and meditate for several minutes until you can feel water creeping into your shoes. You snap then, remembering that's your only pair of shoes, and do your best to carefully bend and untie them. You remember all the curse words you know while doing that, and when you can finally slip out of them you throw them out into the corridor through the open door. The wound on your stomach opens again from all those exercises, and you carefully unbutton your shirt to take a look at it.

Huh, that's not that bad, you think. Just a scratch. You dodged that blow, so the knife aimed at you didn't pierce your stomach, and the wound is slanting.

You moan (you know you can allow yourself that because you're alone) and touch the ridges of the bleeding wound with your fingers. It sure hurts like hell. You lift your other hand to reach the towel that hangs on the wall nearby, and then jam your wound with it. You hiss and curse, and bite your lips. Your open shirt is floating on the tenderly red water, embracing your shattered body. Your pants are wet only in your lower part, your knees are still sticking in the air and dry, and it creates a rather strange feeling. You have no strength to stand up, to shift in another position. You wonder how you even managed to get to your apartment while being in such a horrid condition.

Though information you gathered from that gang that cut you was worth it. People got killed for that pack of files that is now carelessly lying on your floor. YOU almost got killed for that pack of files.

The pain, cutting and sharp with every breath you take, is almost background now, you tuned in and completely forgot how does it feel painless. You go limp, ignoring the lack of comfort when you vertebrae dig into baths bottom, and give out a very very heavy sigh, sending the water near your face vibrating and go circles. You can't tell it if the bleeding had stopped or not. The water is red, and you think you'll never make your shirt white again. You look at your stomach with half-lidded eyes. There are bunch of bruises there, one small, gentle scar right under the bulge of your pubic bone (you got that one in a really fishy way you don't want to talk about now), one long, white trail of scar tissue crossing your left side just underneath the tenth rib, and this new wound, running through your side horizontally like an opened gill. You think stunningly that your new scar would be unparallel and not properly beautiful. Then you think just as stunningly that your thoughts are strange.

Pain pulsates through you, and the thought cripples at the back of your mind that you'll probably bleed to death if you don't get yourself to your first aid kit. But you got interrupted in the middle of your conclusion – something clings at your apartment’s door. You haven’t closed the door! Someone entered your apartment while you were lying in your bath! You don't have guts to stand up right now. To be true, you feel like your guts are going to spill into the bathtub any second. The stranger closes the front door very quietly and steps into the corridor. You decide to go straight on the obvious plateau of the subject.

\- If you find any money here, please share, - you manage out. Only when you start speaking, you notice the horrible taste of blood in your mouth. Your lips are dry and stick to each other, and it's suddenly awkward to make them move. The shifting in your corridor stops. Then, a head picks in the bathroom through its open door. You immediately recognize the face.

\- I don’t need your non-existing money, - spits out Spades Slick. You don't know what you feel while looking at his face (which express his usual extreme degree of disdain), but at last you decide that you're glad and it might be your chance.

\- Mind a little help if you're here anyway? - You ask, trying your best to sound humorous. Or simply to sound alive. Slick ghosts into the bathroom, but still too far from your hand's reach.

\- No. I don't mind at all. Would you mind helping me to find a certain folder with documentation? I heard a rumor you got it.

You choke on air and cough, inducing another wave of hopeless pain.

\- I mean help me! – You force out between coughs, and the blood starts to flow from your nose, - I’m bleeding to death here.

But Slick was already out of the bathroom. You could hear his shifting through the board in the corridor, throwing out your stuff – furious rustling of papers and clinging of keys. Oh, shit, the keys. Hope he doesn’t want to kill you. You can hear him cursing:

\- What a useless creep, piece of shit…

\- I love you so very much too, – You tell the opened door as loud as your torn diaphragm allows you to. That causes a pause in Slick’s soliloquizing.

\- Did you just say something? – You can imagine him cocking a brow. You answer:

\- I said ‘back at you’.

Finally, he bothers to look at the end of the corridor. He chuckles and you hear his steps as he walks to collect the papers you’ve nearly died for. Well, you still have the opportunity.

His lean form appears at the doorframe of the bathroom again, with the folder in his hands. The water has already filled the bath enough to cover your nose, and you can see the delicate bloody trail blooming on the water surface from under your nose and lips. Brain concussion, you ascertain. Or just a broken nose. Spades grins at you silently and just stands there, watching. You feel very tired, weary of these games: gunplays, bloodplays, games of love, games of hate. You want to close your eyes and fell out of your painful bitter consciousness. Slick’s voice interrupts you and keeps from blacking out.

\- You’re still so weak, - he says, and belatedly adds a chuckle to his remark.

There’s more nostalgia in his words, or you’re just hearing what you want to hear.

\- Can you… - You shift in the water, which is strawberry-colored by now, with, - turn the water off? I’ll flood my neighbors.

He says nothing. He just continues watching, his gaze traveling from your nose to your knees, then to your wound, your nose again, your wound again. Files are carefully tucked under his arm, and you want to tell him that you’ve nearly died for them and that it’s unfair, but then Slick pulls out an ace from his sleeve and flickers the card in between his fingers. His eyes meet yours, and though the water is covering your nose already and hamper your breathing you want to ask him if he’s really going to kill you.

Your strength abandons you just in time. Your damaged brain shuts off your weary body, away from the painful consciousness, and the last thing you see before your head is in a black hole is the elegant trails of blood in the water smoking from your wound.

When you come back to consciousness, the water is everywhere, and it nearly carries you out off the tub. The water is clean. You can still feel the pain, but it has localized now, inside your skull and in your torso. You find yourself able to stand up and look at the wound – it is bandaged with a towel. The bleeding has obviously stopped. Your guts are still inside of your body. You bend with a croaking noise and turn the goddamn water off. It is even in your corridor now, and you think that in the end you have ruined your only pair of shoes.

Then you think that Slick didn’t kill you. Again. You don’t find it strange anymore, just a little frustrating, like if he’s been holding something back, a secret he won’t tell you.

You can hear someone banging at your door. That furious someone is yelling about you flooding his apt. You ignore that someone and lean back in you tub again, and let you mind wonder around the new scar you’ve got tonight.


End file.
